Stopping the Violence

Over the past few months, the Peace Schools team at Ba Futuru has been busy undertaking a number of Child Protection and Positive Discipline trainings with high school teachers and government teacher trainers, as well as receiving intensive training from an international child behavioural specialist to expand and enhance the team’s work. 

Ba Futuru has now trained a total of 90 teachers and teacher trainers in Child Protection and Positive Discipline since June this year, and has begun monthly meetings with a focused group of these teachers to support one another as they implement positive discipline strategies in the classroom, and share experiences and ideas throughout this process.  The trainings have been held with three high schools from Dili district, and teacher trainers from the National Institute for Teacher & Educator Training (INFORDEPE), under the Ministry of Education, who between them represented seven of Timor-Leste’s thirteen districts.

Evaluation results show that the trainings were very successful in effectively sharing new information and teaching methods to the participants. Before the trainings, only 14% of the participants could identify three signs of trauma and abuse in children; however, after the training, 71% of participants were able to do this. One teacher shared his own story of change, less than a week after attending the training:  “Some of my fellow teachers were surprised by what I was doing, and said to me at the end of my class, ‘Why are your teaching methods not like they were before? Now you are animating the class, which is very different!’ I encourage my fellow teachers by telling them ‘The methods I was using were from the training with Ba Futuru, and I learnt many other things from the training, too.  Sure, before I used to hit the students a lot, and be angry and yell at them, but it’s not too late for all of us to practice new methods with our students, even though we need a long time to make real change’.”

In late September, the Peace Schools team will run a training outside of Dili for the first time, at a secondary school in Los Palos, Lautem district. They will return there in November to follow up on the training’s impact and run a day of mentoring sessions for teachers to practice their new skills and get feedback and advice from Ba Futuru’s experienced staff.  This Los Palos training is the result of a collaboration with INFORDEPE following the success of the teacher training earlier this year, and we hope that it will act as a pilot program which may lead to further collaborations with the government in the area of positive discipline education for teachers nationally.

One training participant from a high school in Dili shared his views on the 3-day training he attended:  “I feel that this training was beneficial and successful. Something that was new and helpful for me as a key principal to follow was ‘Reinforce and promote good behaviour rather than respond to and punish bad behaviour’. This material supports me greatly to be able to implement new strategies and step away from the methods I have been using, which have failed. In practice while teaching students, I’ve often used negative methods, but I myself haven’t been sure what the real impacts of physical punishment are! Because of this, I am very happy with the information I’ve received from this training. All of this information will help me to minimize my use of the negative methods I previously used, and I recommend that Ba Futuru shares this information also with parents in the community.”

 In July, US consultant Jenna Rudo-Stern worked with the Peace Schools team for three weeks on developing new training materials and positive discipline strategies that focus on positive behaviour reinforcement. The central tenet of this training was that preventing negative behaviour and reinforcing positive behaviour is more effective than punishing negative behaviour. Jenna also ran a one-day training for all Ba Futuru staff on positive behaviour reinforcement, and attended a training with 30 teachers from a Dili high school to see the training in action and take questions from the participants. The Peace Schools team learnt a lot from Jenna and have now begun implementing the new materials and sharing the new ideas with training participants. 

The generous support of individual donors via Global Giving has meant that the Peace Schools project has vital support to expand and improve its work with teachers around Timor-Leste, thereby contributing to stopping the use of violence against children. Thank you for your support!

Links:

• Ba Futuru Website